The 2016 edition of the Citi Open comes earlier than it normally would on the calendar. This tournament would generally be played at the very end of July and the very beginning of August. However, the staging of the Summer Olympic tennis tournament has compressed the calendar.
The WTA event is not as large as the ATP event in what is a shared-tour stop. The men play a 48-man tournament this week, while the women offer a tournament with only five rounds, not six. There are no first-round byes in the WTA event.
The competition in the 32-player main draw for the WTA Citi Open begins on Monday, July 18.
Event Details
Event: Citi Open
Category: WTA International Level
Date: July 18 – 24, 2016
Location: William H.G FitzGerald Tennis Center – Washington, D.C.
With a prize money allotment in the area of $200,000 to $250,000, this tournament doesn’t offer all that much bang for the buck. It’s valuable because it’s one of the first hardcourt stops on tour after Wimbledon and the grass season, plus the brief post-Wimbledon clay season in Europe.
You’re going to find hardcourt specialists, North Americans, Australians, and other players who don’t want to linger in Europe (and on clay) in this tournament. There’s another event in Stanford, California, which generally has a larger purse and higher-ranked players. This tournament gets the slightly lower-ranked players intent on bagging some rankings points.
The points structure under the WTA system is that for the women, the championship at an International level tour event means 280 points. A runner-up finish is worth 180. A semifinal result is 110 points, and a quarterfinal appearance offers 60 points. Round-of-16 results will give 30 points.
Former Champions and Results (5 Years)
Year Champion Runner-up Score
2015 – Sloane Stephens def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova – 6-1, 6-2
2014 – Svetlana Kuznetsova def. Kurumi Nara – 6-3, 4-6, 6-4
2013 – Magdalena Rybarikova def. Andrea Petkovic – 6-4, 7-6
2012 – Magdalena Rybarikova def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova – 6-1, 6-1
2011 – Nadia Petrova def. Shahar Peer – 7-5, 6-2
Player Info:
Samantha Stosur, No. 14 in the world, will be the top seed here. That goes to show just how open this tournament should be. Although she’s 22-12 on the season, she’s done most of that damage on clay. She won’t be as strong of a contender here. On clay, she went 16-5 this season and remember, she went 15-5 on clay last year. On the hard surface this year, she’s just 5-0. Last year, she compiled a record of 16-15.
Sloane Stephens, the defending champion and the No. 23 player in the world, is the second seed. She might be the better bet to win here, though. She has played well in main draws this season, going 21-7. The 23-year-old has matured a little bit and tends to thrive on the hard surface – unlike Stosur. She’s 10-3 on hard courts this season compared to 9-3 on clay and 2-1 on grass. She was a decent 19-12 on the hard courts last year.
Those are the only two top-30 players in this field. Monica Puig will be third. She’s played OK on hard courts this year, going 11-6, but last year she was just 11-14 on the surface in main draws. Kristina Mladenovic will be fourth but she’s just 3-7 on hard courts this year and 16-18 overall. Grass is her forte. Eugenie Bouchard, the big drawing card in the tournament, will be the No. 5 seed. She’s an interesting bet as she’s 15-7 on hard courts this year, which is by far her best surface in 2016. Yulia Putintseva is the sixth seed. Yanina Wickmayer is the seventh seed. Monica Niculescu is the eighth seed.
Wimbledon mixed doubles champion Heather Watson pulled out of the event. American Lauren Davis will replace her in the field. That’s the most notable pullout thus far.
William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center
The William H.G. FitzGerald Tennis Center is a public tennis facility in Washington, D.C. It has a stadium court with 7,500 seats. There are 15 hard courts which facilitate the staging of this event, which requires a large first round. It does not have any covered court, which could be a problem, since temperatures are expected to be near 105 degrees Fahrenheit for much of the tournament. Fitness will be extremely important, as will winning matches in two sets instead of three. Players will want to have night matches instead of day matches.
